This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Open Letter to Bob Woodward, cc Joseph Stiglitz

As the most famous contemporary journalist, you expose the inner secrets of our government. I am wondering why you do not investigate the link between American jobs being shipped overseas, and donations to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from foreign corporations.

I have a hard time believing that these two situations are unrelated. Personally, I believe Americans have to share the work that exists worldwide with workers from other countries. But I am not hearing that conviction offered as justifi-cation for shipping our jobs abroad.

Could it be that there is an understanding between the leaders of the United States and the rest of the world - whether they head capitalist regimes or not - that we agree to spread the work in return for their financial support of our economy, whose collapse would bring the rest of the world down with it?

Without a spectacular revelation that only you can provide of what may be happening, leaders will not be able to tell American workers the truth. They will continue promising to ‘fight for American jobs’, knowing full well this is not in the cards.

Please release our leaders from their captivity to a false narrative so that they can legislate true reform: job sharing. Instead of calling for an increase in the retirement age, let them promise early retirement with full benefits for those who voluntarily give their job to a younger worker. Instead of eight hours a day, allow them to explain that four hours would suffice, because there is more capital floating around in the world than profitable use for it. (Be sure to emphasize the difference between ‘profits’ and investments in schools, medical care for all, green energy, etc. And while you’re at it, suggest that we don’t need more ‘stuff’, but more time for joy.)

We’ve been deriding or condemning Europe ever since the French Revolution. As a last favor, I ask that you reveal the work of the European no-growth movement. Make sure the public and its would-be masters understand that the planet will survive no matter what we do to it, but humanity may not.

Each generation has its problems, and we must not hold future generations hostage to our fears. During the Cold War many chanted “Better Red than Dead”, and today the bogeyman is Sharia law. We need to stop worrying about who will rule the planet and make sure it remains hospitable to humans. Job sharing across the world will enable us to do that, and it will enable our children to find their own rulers and laws.

Welcome to Otherjones!

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’ may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

This blog aims to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.

Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

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P.S. I encourage you to review the archive. You will find many posts from recent years still relevant today.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN offered nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover and get a broad window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who are barred from our own mainstream media.

From time to time I will signal significant news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own.